Product Assurance in Agile Space Systems Development

Abstract

Product assurance is an essential part of product development process if developers want to ensure that final product is safe and reliable. Product assurance can be supported withrisk management and with different failure analysis methods.

Product assurance is emphasized in system development process of mission critical systems. The product assurance process in systems of this kind requires extra attention. Inthis thesis, mission critical systems are space systems and the product assurance processof these systems is presented with help of space standards.

The product assurance process can be supported with agile development because agile emphasizes transparency of the process and fast response to changes. Even if the development process of space systems is highly standardized and reminds waterfall model, it is still possible to adapt agile development in space systems development. This thesisaims to support the product assurance process of space systems with agile developmentso that the final product would be as safe and reliable as possible.

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how well product assurance is performed in Finnish space organizations and how product assurance tasks and activities can besupported with agile development. The research part of this thesis is performed in survey form.